Analysis of current American politics by Adam Tooze
Executive summary
Adam Tooze reads current American politics through the twin lenses of political economy and geopolitics, arguing that the Trump era and its aftershocks have ruptured long-standing norms—from central-bank independence to the framing of climate policy—and that these ruptures have concrete macroeconomic and strategic consequences [1] [2]. Tooze frames Bidenomics as an ambitious but time-constrained project born of crisis, whose temporal contradictions and institutional frictions make the policy landscape brittle and combustible [3] [4].
1. Tooze’s diagnosis: a politics shaped by polycrisis and institutional strain
Tooze characterizes the present as a “polycrisis,” a concatenation of financial, geopolitical and climate stresses that reshape what is politically possible and what policymakers can credibly promise [3] [5]. He sees American politics struggling to adjust to a multipolar world where industrial strategy, energy transitions and the management of inflationary pressures collide; this is why he treats Bidenomics as “born in the middle of a crisis” and operating on a short political clock [3] [4].
2. Trump, sanewashing and the limits of personality analysis
Tooze rejects the idea that trying to “make sense of Trump” is merely a form of soothing delusion—what some call sanewashing—insisting instead that Trump must be understood both as a disruptive personality and as a signal of deeper structural tensions in American political economy [1]. He does not equivocate on character—calling Trump “obviously a degenerate buffoon”—but pushes beyond personality to examine institutional erosion and policy upheaval that Trump-era politics accelerates [1].
3. The Fed as a new political battleground
A recurring theme in Tooze’s recent work is the politicization of the Federal Reserve, where he documents what he calls an emergent conflict between parts of the Trump administration and the Fed’s independence—a conflict framed in some Substack posts as an attempt to “break the Fed” or to subject monetary policy to political control [6] [2]. Tooze treats threats of criminal investigations and public pressure on Fed officials as symptoms of a broader assault on technocratic norms that previously insulated monetary policy from short-term electoral logic [6] [2].
4. Bidenomics: ambition constrained by time and geopolitics
Tooze’s account of Bidenomics emphasizes its ambitious mix of industrial strategy, climate-oriented investment and security-driven production priorities, but he stresses that the project is hamstrung by a short political horizon and by tensions within the policy elite over inflation, China and the fiscal-monetary mix [3] [4]. He warns that the program’s temporal contradictions—large structural shifts demanded quickly—create macroeconomic risks and political vulnerabilities that adversaries and domestic opponents can exploit [3].
5. Climate policy, industry and the strategic pivot
Climate and industrial policy are central to Tooze’s reading: he situates green transition debates inside a contest over national power and economic sovereignty, arguing that Europe, China and the US are all repositioning industry and energy strategy as matters of statecraft rather than purely market choices [1] [7] [4]. Tooze highlights how this reframing complicates transatlantic expectations about decarbonization and renders domestic political debates about “recarbonization” and industrial subsidy regimes much more consequential [7] [4].
6. Method and limits: history, data, and the danger of overreach
Tooze’s method blends historical perspective, data-driven charting and policy critique—he writes Chartbook newsletters and lectures that deploy empirical charts to connect past institutional choices to present dilemmas [8] [6]. At the same time, his critics might say that synthesizing geopolitics, macroeconomics and political psychology risks compressing distinct causal chains into a single narrative; Tooze acknowledges the complexity but argues that the polycrisis itself demands synthetic analysis [3] [5].
7. Stakes and competing agendas
For Tooze, the stakes are systemic: whether American institutions adapt or ossify will shape inflation, investment, energy transitions and geostrategic posture [3] [4]. He explicitly calls out political actors who seek to dismantle technocratic guardrails—such as the Fed’s independence—as pursuing agendas that prioritize short-term political advantage and ideological aims over stable governance, while also recognizing legitimate debates about democratic accountability of unelected institutions [2] [8].